


The Ghosts of Christmas Past

by Likerealpeopledo



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: Gen, Gingerbread Houses, Sweet with a hint of melancholy, TMP Secret Santa Fic Exchange 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:21:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Secret Santa Prompt:  At the end of a busy Christmas Day, "did you get everything you wanted?"</p><p>Of course, it took a turn, but I hope that this is everything you wanted in a Christmas fic, Cells55 (Cesays on Tumblr).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghosts of Christmas Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cells55](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cells55/gifts).



**December 19, 1986**

Danny Castellano woke up to the smell of gingerbread baking, and it was the first time he’d smelled actual food from his mother’s oven since the spring. His mom hadn’t really had the time or the energy to cook in the months after his dad left, so Danny had become accustomed to dinners out of paper bags or cold cereal over the kitchen sink. He didn’t always mind, because he was finally losing some of that stupid baby fat that had haunted him for so long, because how much off-brand toasted oat cereal could you possibly consume in one sitting? It tasted more like a cardboard box than the box actually did (and he knew because his best friend Stevie dared him to try, and one thing that twelve year old Danny Castellano did not do was turn down a dare. Double, triple, dog, or otherwise) and it didn’t even give the milk a new and interesting flavor like Cocoa Puffs or Fruity Pebbles used to, back when they could still afford the glitzy brand name stuff. He even missed the glossy box tops, and the games on the back, and the possibility that there would be a _prize inside_ , even though he was rapidly outgrowing the need for a temporary tattoo. Maybe he just wanted the option, maybe he just wanted to know that he could open something expecting one thing, and find something completely different. Toasted oat cereal was junk, and it set off the anger that so often coiled inside of him,  the anger that was always threatening to uncoil, without much effort. 

Danny pulled on his sweat pants and tiptoed down the hallway toward the kitchen.   He couldn’t explain why he thought he needed to creep up on the smell of baked goods; maybe so he wouldn’t spook the elves that he was sure were at work, because his regular life didn’t consist of gingerbread baking mothers and wholesome festive scenes. Not anymore, anyway.

He found his mother bent over the kitchen counter, rolling out dough, banging her rolling pin against the Formica. She was humming along with the radio, her curly brown hair tied up in one of Danny’s old bandanas. He tapped her lightly on the shoulder, since the volume of _White Christmas_ could have drowned out a naval air raid, and he didn’t want to scare her. She’d been through enough. “Ma.”

“Danny! Perfect timing! Once we get this in the oven, we can work on assembling the sides and get those to set while the roof cools.”

“Where’s Richie?” His little brother was never not nearby: he stuck to him like glue.  Danny couldn’t get past the Giancarlo’s house next door without a tiny, curly haired companion tagging along, chirping a list of annoying questions about where they were going and who they were seeing and could he come could he come could he come too?

“He’s spending the night at Grandma’s. I thought we could both use a day to ourselves for once.” Danny’s mom ruffled the back of his already bed-head afflicted hair, too long in back and on the sides. He was trying to get it like Bruce Springsteen’s hair on the cover of the _Born in the USA_ album, but he looked more like Cousin Larry from _Perfect Strangers_. It was impossible having curly hair, which seemed to have happened overnight too, just like the new downy fuzz on his chin or those creepy new pubic hairs that he was slowly becoming obsessed with.

Danny took over the rolling pin, ignoring the fact that he hadn’t even brushed his teeth or pretended to be apathetic toward spending the day alone with his mother.  He felt like he hadn't seen her in weeks, and maybe it was because he hadn't.  She was always at work, or locked in her room with the lights off, a cool washcloth over her eyes.  He missed the buzzy little lady that had been his mother, who flitted around darning socks and making paper maiche volcanoes for school projects.  That mother left the same night his dad did, replaced by this stranger, one with sunken cheekbones and a sad little smile. 

Out the window, new powdery white snow blanketed their tiny front yard, and covered the sidewalks. Not even the mailman had made tracks yet, and somehow the neighborhood, and maybe even the whole world outside of it, seemed new again. A new world without dads that sneak out on a rainy April night, or moms who wake up crying every morning, or little brothers who don’t trust you to go out to get the mail because maybe you’ll disappear too.

“I didn’t know it snowed.”

Annette stopped what she was doing, her recipe book balanced precariously on her knobby knees, and looked up at her son. “You gotta get out of your own head every once in a while, kid. It’s nice out here.”

Danny had learned the phrase “fake it until you make it” from an After School special and he immediately recognized it in his mother.   It pinched at his gut, and he shook off the feeling that they were both acting out an O. Henry story, both sacrificing, neither winning. He grunted in response.  

He loaded the cookie sheet into the oven and sat down next to his mother at the kitchen table, their shoulders touching. They never were good with personal space. “I know this year hasn’t been easy for you, Daniel,” She began, and Danny could see the water in the corners of her eyes, the same way it always started, and he shifted his gaze back down to his hands, where he was toying with some peppermint hard candies. He thought he’d get immune to her tears after a while, but he never really did. Even at twelve, he hated to see anyone cry, but especially his mother. It tore at him in strange places, and made him want to hurt people, maim people who hurt her, “You’ve been so good, even when you didn’t have to be.”

“Aw, Ma, don’t---“

“No, Danny, I do. We’re not going to end this year the way we started it, I promise you.”

Danny wasn’t sure how that was or how it wasn’t, or how any of this year had been a choice, because he certainly didn’t remember having options. And if he had any, he clearly chose badly. For some reason, in the last six months, everyone kept telling him that he was the Man of the House, as though he should have a theme song and an _M_ emblazoned on his chest. He wasn’t going to let it happen again, that was for sure. Love didn’t pick people, people picked love. It seemed so simple to him, and he didn't know why he couldn't help his mom understand.  If he never let anyone else in, if he never needed someone else to make him whole, history could not repeat itself.  He was twelve, he wasn’t stupid. 

He didn’t disagree with his mom, though, because that wasn’t something that he did anymore. Instead, he helped her make the Royal icing and piped the sugary adhesive onto the sides of the finally cooled homemade gingerbread, and he found some empty glass soda bottles to help hold them up while the frosting dried. He was weirdly good at it, this gingerbread house assembly, and he didn’t understand why or how.

He laid out the candies carefully, arranged by color and shape, and worked meticulously to apply them to the structure’s roof in a crisscross pattern. He thoughtfully considered the placement of the candy canes, whose arches reflected the shape of the door frame. He matched the red swirl of the peppermints to the gumdrops that lined the eaves. It was beautiful, when he stepped back to look at his handiwork, the sun already down, the streetlights reflecting off the blankness of the streets.

His mom let him stay up to watch David Letterman to celebrate their accomplishment, and they danced to Darlene Love singing _Christmas (Baby Please Come Home.)_ He wanted to memorize his mom’s smile, and her laughter as he spun her around the living room. For those few minutes, even if there were none after that, his family was whole again.

Danny went to bed that night thinking that maybe he could make something beautiful if he tried.

 

 

* * *

 

**December 8, 2004**

 

Christina hated Christmas with a strange passion for someone who had grown up Methodist, because what did Methodists really feel strongly about anyway? Danny always viewed Christina’s Protestantism as an affront to his own beliefs, so much so that he had to decide that she was sent into his life (besides the obvious love, honor and obey) to challenge and strengthen his faith. He had so many conversations with Father Frank about it that he was starting to think that maybe Christina was actually sent into his life to strengthen his relationship with his priest instead.

She didn’t, or maybe more accurately, couldn’t understand why he would want to go Mass on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, because it was Wednesday. “Who would go to Mass voluntarily on a Wednesday?”

“People not trying to burn in hell, for one. Feast days are not optional, Chris.” Danny tucked his Filofax into his messenger bag, and searched for his apartment keys. Christina had photographs on every surface in their apartment, lining the dining table and the kitchen counters, the coffee table and the bookshelves. She was working on a new exhibit that was opening over Christmas, one that she said exposed the commercialism of the holiday, and the crassness of American consumerism. To Danny’s admittedly untrained eye, it mostly looked like Christmas had thrown up in their apartment, and it was sort of inadvertently festive,  “Have you seen my keys? I thought I put them on the table by the door...” He rooted through a few more photographs, maybe she’d taken a picture of his keys and he could retrace his steps, “What the hell, Christina?”

He held the offending photograph out in front of himself, like it could burn him, or it was a snake that was threatening to strike. He thrust the picture under her nose, and she backed up involuntarily. Her curiosity piqued, Christina grabbed the card out of his hand. “It looks like a birth announcement.” She contemplated it for a second, examining the names, her expression unchanging. “As a doctor of babies, I would think that you could recognize—“ She stopped mid-sentence, with the realization of what she was holding, rubbing the glossy print with her thumb. “Danny.”

“I don’t want that in my house.” His voice shook, more with venomous anger than anything else. “Get it out of my house.”

Christina dropped the card into her purse, which was miraculously available in the hodge podge of photographs and photography equipment, but of course, not his goddamn keys. “I’ll throw it away down at the studio.”  Whatever fight he thought he was going to have; about messes or consideration or _could you just not cover up my keys/wallet/subway tokens_ slipped out into the winter afternoon. Instead, she took Danny by the hand and led him back to the sofa, pushing a pile of photography magazines onto the floor. He was too crestfallen to argue.

“Should we talk about it?”

Danny shook his head. If there was one Catholic trait he possessed in spades, it was repression. He was going to grind the memory of receiving that birth announcement into dust and press it into the darkest corners of a room he never visited. It would be gone before the week was out. If asked, in a few days, it would all be buried, and Danny would not be able to recount the minutes between 9:05 and 9:12 a.m. on December 8, 2004, for any amount of money.  Maybe he was in the shower, maybe he was kissing his wife before he left for church. 

Everybody has their miracles.

 "Okay, then, tell me something good."  Christina centered herself, squaring her shoulders with Danny's.  They'd been married for just over a year, and she knew when he was unraveling, even when he didn't tell her. 

Danny stared at his wife blankly.  "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Tell me about this stupid ---I mean, please tell me about the Immaculate Conception."

"Christina, come on, you know what it is." 

"Tell me again.  I like when you tell me stories.   Even the biblical ones."

"I'm late for Mass and I can't find my keys and all the good pews will be full and I'll have to do that walk of shame to the front row like a person who can't get it together to come to church on time.  I always judged those people.  Don't you have watches?  Don't you know what time it starts?  The same time every week!  You can't find a seat before the processional?"  His heart was beating needlessly fast, and somewhere in the soot of his latest subjugated discovery, he knew it wasn't about punctuality.  "I really don't have time for this, Christina."  He felt as though his skin was on fire, or his internal organs were melting into his spine.  He wasn't sure if his spleen was still functioning.  He could barely focus on Christina's turquoise blue eyes, or the way her blonde hair fell over them like a cornsilk curtain. She looked fragile, same as she did the night he met her in the pizza parlor, but now all of a sudden, she could carry his weight.  When did that happen?

"There are other churches with other masses, Danny.  I think you need to stay here and talk to me right now."  She kept her voice so calm and clear, and he wanted to follow behind it, but he just couldn't grab hold of the words like he needed.

"I don't really think--"  Danny tipped his head back as Christina dug her long fingers into the tops of his shoulders, attempting to steady him, but succeeding only in making him more tense.   "I appreciate the gesture, I do, but I'm fine.  I'm gonna be okay."

"You're always okay, Danny.  Don't you ever wanna be great?"

Being great gets you knocked down from greater heights.  Okay gets you by.  He'd told her that before, and he guessed that she didn't believe him then.  He didn't have to pick himself back up if he never fell. "I really don't have time for this, Christina.  I gotta get to Mass."

"Okay, Danny, but when you're ready."

"I'm good, babe.  I'm good."  He brushed his lips across her forehead, catching a glimpse of silver from the kitchen as he rose.  "My keys!"

 "Have fun, sweetheart.  I'll be here when you get home."   She smiled, and brushed his hair back with her hand.  Danny thought he caught a whiff of nutmeg as she leaned against him, and he had a strange nostalgic twinge. 

"Is that your perfume?"

"Is what my perfume?"  

Danny tried to ignore the fact that she was looking at him like he had three heads again, and he swallowed whatever notion he had about Christmas confections wafting from his wife.  He needed to get to Mass.

 

 

* * *

 

 

  **December 25, 2008**

The winter blues had gripped Danny fiercely, even just four days after the season had officially begun. He knew that he wasn’t alone, it was a common affliction for New Yorkers, once the sun starting setting by five o'clock in the afternoon, and the grey clouds seemed to hover over the buildings without allowing any relief from the warm yellow sun. Every year, as winter descended, it began to look as though he was living in the Industrial Revolution, all smokestacks and steam boats, and nothing modern or convenient. It was a convenient excuse for his recent moodiness, at any rate.  Danny was hardly ready to admit that winter had nothing to do with the real reason he had chosen to abandon all hope that had entered here: his wife was gone.

Christina moved out in the spring, and Danny still felt like he didn't quite have all the details at his disposal. He didn't want the details. It wasn't lost on him, either, that he found Christina with the reporter she was working on the Syria story with at around the same time of year that his father had left twenty two years before. _Spring cleaning_ meant something different to Danny than it did most people, and rather than a fresh start, somehow he was always the one left clinging to bits of the past, in whatever shape those remnants took. Even in December, after transferring the remains of his marriage out of the home they had shared, he was still finding Christina’s things intermingled with his. He unpacked a box of kitchen supplies and found her camera lens. He found her bra in his linens. He could smell her lemony soap on his towels, on his boxer shorts, on his scrubs.  He wanted to set fire to the rest of his cardboard boxes after that.

He thought that he and Christina would have had a bitter divorce, full of demands and recriminations, and lawyers with nothing to lose but the billable hours. But the reality wasn't how he imagined at all. Just like their marriage had turned out not to be, it was as easy as making a few phone calls, and signing a piece of paper, and making it look like, in the eyes of church, that nothing had ever happened at all. Danny wondered what pieces of paper he could sign to make himself feel that way. He thought it would have been harder, or more complex, but the hardest part was not sprinting back to their shared apartment and demanding that Christina take him back, and nothing to do with the machinations of their separation.  Maybe it was all he deserved; this life, that wife.

Even his gift of repression was beginning to fail him, and strange memories were bubbling to the surface when he least expected.

 _Time's Running Out!_ The holiday sales ads mocked him during commercials as he stationed himself on the doctor's lounge sofa at St. Brendan's, waiting for his next delivery. He had picked up as many hospital shifts as sense and good medical practice would allow him, in an effort to avoid having to make any kind of human connection, other than the one human connection he was actually good at: bringing babies into the world. But instead of birthing babies, he found himself a permanent troll under the bridge of the parade of baked goods and piles of brightly wrapped candies that everyone seemed to loiter near in the doctor’s lounge during the holiday season. He glowered at anyone who dawdled or lollygagged by the counter, eeny-meeny-miny-ing their selections, and at one decidedly low point, he forcibly jammed a merrily frosted cut-out reindeer cookie into Dr. Shulman's hand. "Just eat it, Marc. If you don't like it, throw it out. _C'mon_.."

Dr. Shulman was an endlessly patient man, but that patience could be tested by the slightly sweaty, disproportionately enraged doctor in his practice. Danny knew, on a cellular level, the moment the cookie left his air space, he had signed his own death warrant, if death meant having to have some sort of heart to heart conversation about what a personal disaster he was becoming. "Come on, Danny, let's find a quiet place to talk."

Danny trudged behind his elder partner, head down, feeling exactly like he had the day that he punched Rocco Malone in the gut for calling him PeeWee during the fourth grade spelling bee. He was getting his second trip to the principal's office in twenty-five years. 

Dr. Shulman settled into a table on the edge of the bustling cafeteria, and gestured to the chair across from him. "Listen, Marc, I know I was out of line---"

"I can't disagree with you, Danny. I know you're going through a difficult time personally, and things have been stressful at the practice since Mindy came on, too, but I can't have you here, marinating in your own misery."

Danny wanted to protest, but he was having trouble finding the words.  "I'm fine."

Dr. Shulman didn't appear convinced, and his brows knitted together in concern, "Danny, as much as I would like for that to be true, I am going to need for you to go home."

Danny wasn't sure what home Dr. Shulman was referring to, since his spartan new Tribeca loft felt more like a warehouse than an apartment. He must have shaken his head, _No_.

"Well, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Go help that adorable mother of yours hang her Christmas lights."

"I did that weeks ago." Danny mumbled. In what world did people hang lights on Christmas Day? Plus, Ma was on a cruise with Dot, a non-refundable one she had offered three times to cancel to stay home with him, but he couldn't let her do that. He didn’t need to be babysat.  In fact, he _wanted_ to be alone on the holidays. He was choosing solitude. It was liberating that way. 

Dr. Shulman rose, patting Danny on the arm. "You're resourceful, Dr. Castellano. You'll figure it out."

Danny nodded, apologizing again, and wound his way through the quiet hospital corridors toward the locker room. A familiar dark haired whirl of wind barreled down the hall in the opposite direction as he turned the corner, and he was knocked back with a force that shoved all of the air out of his lungs. One of the boxes she carried whizzed past his head and landed with a thud on the linoleum. "Watch where you're going, Lahiri, come on!"

Mindy, who had been brought on because Dr. Shulman thought that the practice was trending too white and too male, with her cartoon voice and her garishly colored dresses and her way too bubbly personality, made Danny's skin crawl. No, that wasn't true. She drove him nuts, but in a weird way, he welcomed it. If he was truthful, he got a little thrill riling her up. He was on the hunt for new hobbies since his divorce, so tormenting the new doctor was fairly entertaining, at least during work hours. "Oh shut up, Castellano. Stolen any Christmases today?"

"No." Danny scowled at her. "What is all that?" He gestured at the heap of packages in her arms, the ones that had nearly decapitated him.

"Actually, I am glad I ran into you. You almost missed my Christmas present!" She sorted through the brightly wrapped gifts, and found the one with his name on it. "Merry Christmas, Mr. Scrooge!"

"But I didn't get you anything." He tried to hand it back to her, but somehow, even without available hands, she pushed it back toward his chest.

"That's not the point of Christmas, Danny, geez, have you never celebrated before?"

"I'm surprised your people do." He mumbled, toying with the gift tag that dangled from his present. He hadn't noticed the little bow her lips made before when she was annoyed. _God, I am so lonely._

"My people from _Boston_ , do, in fact, celebrate Christmas, weirdo." She rolled her eyes in a motion so exasperated, Danny was surprised he didn't hear the eye roll before he saw it. 

"Where are you going? I thought you were working all day?"

He didn't feel like explaining, so he just shook his head. "Thanks for the gift, Mindy, you really didn't have to do that. You have a merry Christmas."

"Did you--a bunch of my friends are getting together tonight for Orphan Christmas--everybody who couldn't get back to their families, we're going to eat Chinese and get crunked and watch Christmas movies at my place tonight, if you wanted to join."

"Crunked?" She talked like she was a teenager sometimes, and not the kind of teenager that was wise beyond her years, either.

"Drunk, Grandpa."

"Nah, I'll pass."

"Well, if you change your mind, you have my number." He actually didn't, and he didn't want it. He didn't need to fraternize with a colleague outside of work, and he didn't need to get sucked into some pity party for the lonely hearts club, either.

Because she was exactly the kind of person who seemed capable of wassailing directly in the face of an unsuspecting co-worker against his will, Danny took two steps backward. 

Mindy motioned with her shoulders, as her hands were still full, and before he knew what was happening, she was on her tiptoes, kissing him on the cheek. "Merry Christmas, Grumpster." 

Danny could feel the blush creeping up the back of his neck and spreading to his face.  She had no sense of personal space, and it was absolutely unnerving.   "Merry Christmas, Mindy." 

She turned back, her hair sweeping across her shoulders, "Oh, and hey, enjoy your personalized Beyonce candle!"

It didn't seem likely.

Danny sat on his sofa, a football game on the television set, the volume muted. He didn’t want to the read the articles that his mother had so helpfully cut out of her women’s magazines, with horrendous titles like _10 Survival Tips for the Newly Divorced_ and _Is There Christmas After Divorce_? And it seemed like every time he threw out the latest batch, another set of them reappeared on his coffee table. It was a terrible parlor trick. And he wondered if he shouldn’t gently ask his mother for his key back.

He couldn't seem to focus on the game, and his other new hobby, home brewed beer, had yielded some questionable results. _Dr. Dan's Peppermint Cheesecake Ale_ left something to be desired, maybe it was too ambitious for his first time out, and he poured the bottle down the sink. As he rooted through his well-stocked pantry to locate an antidote to the bitter, metallic taste in his mouth, he stumbled upon his baking supplies. He collected molasses and brown sugar and nutmeg and cinnamon, and before he knew what he was doing, Danny was mixing together the ingredients for gingerbread, _Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)_ playing on his stereo speakers.

Maybe he didn’t need a wife, or Orphan Christmas. He had his own traditions, and his rituals, the things that held him together, even when his external world was in chaos. He didn’t have to be anything for anyone else anymore. He was free.  Danny pounded out the dough, his marble rolling pin making dents in his counter tops with the force of his motion. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made one of these houses, or why he’d stopped.

He ate too healthily to have appropriately decorative candy on hand, until he remembered the Christmas gifts that had been foisted upon him by grateful new parents and overly eager nurses.  He tore open the packages and the bags, assembling the gumdrops and the candy canes and the tightly wrapped hard candies in neat rows.  He arranged them by size, and shape, and usefulness, placing them carefully on each surface.  It was long after midnight by the time each candy was precisely affixed to the eaves and roof and door frame, and Danny rolled his head to relieve the strain in his neck from his effort.  He surveyed his work--swoops and curls of icing representing snow and icicles dangling from the Georgian slant of the roof, a walkway neatly lined with miniature bits of gumdrops that he had painstakingly cut and placed with tweezers.  Nothing was out of place.  He grinned, admiring his handiwork, what might have been his best gingerbread house since his first, and he instinctively glanced around for someone else to appreciate it with him. 

Five years, and she hadn't had the decency to tell him that she felt like they were drifting apart.  Five years, and she let him find out on his own.  Five years, and he just wasn't married anymore.  He had forgotten what it really felt like to rage, to feel the adrenaline course through his limbs and pound in his ears and just how quickly he could lose track of his faculties and time and space.  He had forgotten how satisfying it could be to lash out, to _let go_ ; and he didn't stop until the gingerbread house was a pile of candy coated rubble on his dining table. 

Next year he'd make one twice the size, and finally order that sugar stain glass from Belgium.  Next year would be better.

* * *

 

 

 

**December 24/25, 2014**

When Mindy declared in mid-December that she was taking back Christmas, Danny would have been lying if he said that a chill didn't run down his spine. She went on a rambling speech about Maria Menounos stealing her thunder, and homewrecking philanderers and disappearing boyfriends (it took Danny upwards of thirty seconds to realize that she was referring to him with the last rejoinder and it gave him a little bit of pause), and it was at that point that Danny decided that it was best just to jump in with both feet instead of resisting.

It had taken Mindy thirteen days to talk Danny into putting up a Christmas tree because _it’s not about Santa Claus, it’s about our Lord and Savior’s birth, and the Wise Men didn’t truck a Douglas Fir into that damn stable_ and four more to convince him to get a real one because, _who is going to vacuum up all those needles, Mindy, who?_ But once she did it, with her wheedling and cajoling, and threats to withhold sexual favors, Danny’s apartment smelled like fresh pine and balsam and actual, real life Norman Rockwell- Martha Stewart-Rockefeller Plaza-Rockettes-at-Radio-City- Christmas.

Sure, he barely consented to Wreath Witherspoon on the back of his front door after another three days, because _who will even get that pun, is everyone we know thirteen? And while we're on the subject of puns, please stop sending me texts at work about stuffing my stocking. I'm not always behind a desk, if you know what I'm saying, thank you very much._ He wasn’t even sure why he argued with her anymore about the little details, but it made sense to him that he would at least put up a fight, because what, did he not have a say in anything anymore?

He hated to admit it, for fear of jinxing it, but it was beginning to feel like whatever he had lost in the years prior, seemed to be slowly recovered.  Except.  There was always an exception, because his name was Daniel Castellano, and that was how his life worked.  Except his girlfriend of over eight months, in a fit of (what turned out to be a complete misconception on his part) whimsy and professional development, accepted a fellowship three thousand miles and eight months away.  Of course she did.

In nine days, Mindy would be leaving for Stanford, and he’d be just where he started; empty apartment, getting weirdly emotional about the Obama girls helping their Dad pardon Thanksgiving turkeys (they were too old for egg hunts, and that was just one more thing to feel melancholy about, frankly) and wondering why he always had to end up by himself and in what past life (if he were to believe in that kind of malarkey) he pissed off whatever deity decided people's relationship fates. Mindy had been packing, and little pieces of her were disappearing from his apartment again: hairbrushes and pink robes and little towels in the bathroom that he didn't understand the point of but wasn't allowed to use, they were all just migrating west for the winter. And spring. And summer.

Probably because Mindy felt just the smallest bit guilty about leaving, she consented to Danny’s most sacred Christmas traditions (well, his oldest traditions anyway, from before the time that he instituted the Holiday Fortress of Solitude Policy): Midnight Mass, a bottle of wine, then sleeping the sleep of the dead into Christmas morning, followed by an enormous, gut-filling dinner of homemade pasta and flaky fish surrounded by a myriad of wildly gesticulating Italians and whomever they were labeling as family that year.

On her best behavior, Mindy barely complained about the length of the mass, although she did ask midway through the service if the choir was being paid by the verse. He just laughed, because really, who knew how long _O Come O Come Emmanuel_ could go on? (Eons, it turned out.) So Mindy snuggled into his side, her cheek against his shoulder, their arms linked. Danny had always loved the ceremony of the candlelit service, and how much it felt like the true meaning of church: the community, rather than the building. With Mindy, it felt downright romantic, and he had to stop himself from reaching behind her to rest his hand on its usual perch.

They walked home, even though it was one a.m., and taking a cab would have been the sensible choice. The streets were still, and fresh snow glittered against the deep navy sky. Mindy squeezed Danny's hand, "It's so weird to think that I won't see snow in California--or this could be the only snow I see this year. Crazy."

Danny felt the squeeze on his internal organs before her statement registered in his brain, and he was pretty sure that the burning in his lungs wasn’t just the icy air. _It doesn't have to be. You can still stay. Why is everyone so crazy about going to these places without weather? Who doesn't want some variety--especially someone who demands so many wardrobe changes. "_ Crazy." If he could have pushed out any more words, he was sure it would have been those. Instead, he bit his lip and concentrated on how the streetlights reflected off Mindy's hair, and the way her hand felt in his; cool and dry and deliciously soft.

Back at his loft, Mindy poured the wine as Danny shed his suit and tie, and he unzipped her dress, trailing his fingers down the delicate line of her back. He briefly buried his nose in the bend of her neck, kissing down to her clavicle and she giggled, "That tickles, babe." She patted his head, and padded toward the bedroom. He wasn't sure if he could afford a missed opportunity for intimacy, not at t-minus nine days, so he sprinted to catch up to his girlfriend, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her onto the bed, trailing his lips around her neck and jaw. "Danny, please. I'm so sleepy. People should use midnight mass as a spa experience. It's very relaxing."

He didn't mean to groan, but he did, as he rolled off of her, with her dress was still half on, her hair fanned out over his pillow. "Of course. G'night, sweetheart." Danny dropped a kiss onto her forehead, and balancing his weight on his hands, lowered his lips down to hers. "I love you." He didn't say those words all that often, usually, because she knew. He didn't have to write it across the sky, he just showed her. Didn't he?

Mindy made a little "mmhmm" sound from the back of her throat, and shifted her dress over her head, not even attempting to dress in her pajamas. "I am so zen right now." He admired the curve of her breasts in her matching bra and panties, and willed away his desire to run his hands all over her deep brown skin. Mindy was asleep before Danny could answer, snoring softly, her arm thrown over her head.

By the morning, inches of fresh snow had fallen, and Danny unwrapped embarrassing amounts of gifts while Mindy perched on the edge of the sofa and oohed and aahed at her own shopping prowess: ties and travel mugs and expensive moisturizers and cashmere sweaters and movies and novels and concert tickets and anything that Danny may have mentioned in passing or seen in a catalog or shown any vague interest in the past eight months (although there were definitely several shirts that he felt were some kind of test or trick:  he'd have to sort that out later.)  “Is there an empty mall in Paramus right now?”

Mindy gagged, “Gross.” She eased into his chair, snaking around him. “You deserve to be spoiled every once in a while.”

He didn’t let her fall asleep that time.

* * *

Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, after Danny had consumed his weight in halibut and lamb and mostaccioli, Mindy settled into his lap, kissing his cheek and then lingering on his mouth. “I didn’t know it could be like this.”

“Be like what?” Sometimes he would forget that there were other people around when Mindy was as close as she was, and he pressed her to his chest. He thought he might have heard Dot cough nearby. _“Boundaries.”_

“Just all of this.” Mindy said dreamily, probably bolstered from all of her glasses of wine and too many Italian confections. 

Danny didn’t want to admit that he hadn’t either, and he was worried that it would never be again.

* * *

“Did you get everything you wanted?”

They were finally home, back in Danny’s apartment, satiated and settling in for the night.  Mindy's face was freshly free of make-up, her hair in a messy bun.  He wanted to memorize every tiny line by her mouth, every crease of her forehead, how everything just fit. 

"Mindy, you know that all I want---"

"Are you seriously about to paraphrase Mariah Carey? Because I desperately want to capture this moment on film.” She started to lift back out of bed, reaching for her ever present cell phone on the nightstand. Her nightstand, with the moisturizers and the neck massagers and the lip glosses that tasted like sugar cookies. That nightstand; the one that was going to become just his again in a few days.

Danny gently pressed her back to the bed, his hand on her hip, "Not now, Mindy. I just, I need to say this, please."

Her smile froze a little, because she recognized his emotionally constipated face immediately. "Please--"

"Please don't go." Danny smiled, raising his eyebrows a little, as if it was a question. "I got everything I wanted. I finally got every--I obviously can't make you stay. I want whatever you want. I do. But--"

"But you want me to stay." Mindy bit her lip, and he immediately hated himself for saying it. For making her feel like he was trapping her. For trying to trap her.

"Danny, you know that I can’t.”

“But  what if I wanted you to stay?” He knew he sounded desperate and cloying and monstrous, but there wasn’t anything else to tell but the truth.

Mindy sat up a little straighter in bed, toying with the book that Danny had brought with him to bed. "You know what?  I miss having you as my best friend. Sometimes I wish that I still had you to talk to about you."

He was puzzled, but that was not unlike any other minute of any other day he spent with her, "You have me. You’re talking to me."  He explained gently, as if she were a stroke victim.

"But I don’t have objective you."

"Mindy, I was almost never objective when it came to you. If you thought that I was, I am a better liar than I thought."

"So you’ve been giving me bad advice all these years on purpose?" 

"I wouldn’t say _on purpose_ but there were occasions that it occurred to me that maybe me being selfish when it came to you wasn’t an entirely bad thing."

"Are you being selfish now?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Is it a bad thing?"

"A little." He considered her for a moment, leaning his head against her shoulder. He knew that he was coming undone, and he wasn't sure if he could control what came next.  He didn't think he could control anything.  "I didn’t want to--If you go--- I don’t want you to have to choose at all, like it’s an _either/or_ proposition. I don’t want to be the _or_."

"So you want it to be more of a _yes/and_ situation?"

"If I have to have the situation at all, I want to be the _and_ , yes."

"Danny, Dot said something weird tonight, about...Were you really going to ask me to marry you at the Christmas party?"

 _Damnit, Dot. Boundaries, my ass._ "You weren’t supposed to find out."

"Well, the cat is out of the bag, Castellano."  Her voice had a tartness to it that it did not usually possess and his stomach curdled.

"I was going to. I was. But I realized that it wasn't what you needed." 

'Why do you get to decide what I need?"

"I don't..." He knew how close he had been to deciding a lot of things for her without her permission, "I didn't decide for you. You really wanted that fellowship. And you really needed that fellowship. More than you needed a proposal."

Mindy’s previously hopeful countenance dissipated, and Danny tried to edge closer to her, to bridge the gap with physical proximity, but she only recoiled. “You don’t get to decide those things for me, Danny.”

“I wasn’t—I didn’t—I just thought you would rather have the acceptance letter than a ring.”

“I thought you didn’t want it to be _either/or_ , Danny. Get your story straight.”

“My story? Mindy, you were so upset about Dr. Ledreau not coming through, and I was trying to do a nice thing!  How is it that I'm getting in trouble for doing a nice thing?"  He knew it was a nice thing because he had done a terrible thing, and he was beginning to think that he would always be running up that hill, just hoping to get the next save in time.  At some point, he was going to have to stop making the same mistakes.

"So you want me to give up the fellowship and stay here with you?" 

"Yes."  It didn't sound that crazy when she said it out loud.  It should have sounded crazier, because then he wouldn't have been fighting her on it.  It was getting harder and harder for him to tell the difference between being right and being a good boyfriend. 

"You want me to give up the fellowship that you raced all over the city to save, that you gave me to me, as a gift.  You want to take that back?"  He was certain that he wasn't right, not if the crease between her eyebrows was any indication.  Mindy shook her head.  "You have to stop giving me things and yanking them away again, Danny.  It's getting to be a real pattern for you."

"I'm not taking---Okay, fine, go, but don’t expect me just to sit here pining for you, while you--you gallivant around the west coast.”  _That escalated quickly._

“Are you seriously giving me an ultimatum right now?”  Her chin quivered with her indignation, and Danny withdrew his previous line of offense. 

 _No. No. No. No._ “No, I just—There are so many things that would work against us. The time difference, the distance, our jobs—we just found each other. You just figured out how to work my remote control. It’s not time to put three thousand miles between us. It’s too new. It’s too breakable.”

Mindy crossed her arms, giving him the thousand yard stare capable of cutting him in two. He didn’t have a plan other than pleading. “Is that what you think of us? We’re breakable?”

“Aren’t we?” 

He didn’t stop her as she stormed into the living room, and he sat on the edge of their bed, listening for the slam of the front door.  It didn't come.  Instead, he heard the television turn on, and the volume rise to _blare_ ,  and he realized that Mindy hadn't gone anywhere.  He attempted to read his book, but the words jumbled on the page.  He wasn't sure how long he should allow her to cool down, _if_   he should give her time to cool down.  He hated never really knowing the rules anymore.  Every situation called for some different nuance of conflict resolution and he just didn't have the tools.  Not yet. But he waited, because it seemed like what people do, and he was trying to be more like people again. 

Ugh, people.  He was going to have to eventually admit that he was a person, and that he didn't always do things the way other people did them. 

Mindy had gone radio silent, no television set blasting, no banging or clanging against his granite counters.  Maybe she had left after all, but by slipping out silently.  He hated to admit that he preferred a noisy exit. 

Instead of an empty living space, he found Mindy hunched over the dining room table, an expression of rapt attention softening her face.  "Hang on, I'm not ready for you yet."  Her voice was low and temperate again, and although she wasn't looking at him directly, her eyes no longer appeared to contain murder.  

"Do you want me to go back in there?"  He gestured to the bedroom with a jerk of his thumb.  He didn't have a plan, and his first instinct in that instance was generally, run, "Do you still need more time?  Are you--are you still mad at me?" 

Mindy shook her head, her silky ponytail swishing behind her.  "Oh, I'm still mad at you, but--."  She smiled, still distracted by her construction work on the table.  Glitter covered every surface and candy wrappers littered the floor.  Mindy released a handful of coconut flakes over her handiwork, and announced with flourish, "Ta-da!" 

Danny squinted at a ramshackle brown and white structure. “What is that?”

“It’s the Mindy Lahiri Memorial Gingerbread Staten Island Porch.” She gestured grandly, curtseying in her flannel pajama pants.  She was wearing her glasses, and white frosting was smudged over her left eye.  Upon closer inspection, the Mindy Lahiri Memorial Gingerbread Staten Island porch was definitely two flat pieces of cookie affixed together perpendicularly and slathered generously with icing, with railings made of pretzel logs coated in a healthy application of glitter and tiny colorful balls lining the makeshift windows.  "See, the little porch light?  And the mailbox?"  He did not.  Mindy was a lot of things:  beautiful, smart, compassionate, irritating, spontaneous, curious, real--but a master builder she was not. 

“A Staten Island—“  Warmth flooded his limbs, and he reached for her hand.

"I think that it's taken me a little while to figure out that with you, I have to trust not what you say, but what you do.  I know that you love me.  I know that you want what's best for me even if it isn't what's best for you.  That's why you got me my fellowship letters, because you'll do anything for me.  Even if it hurts you."  She ran the pad of her thumb over his cheek, pausing near his eye.  Her hands were warm and sticky and Danny lowered her hand to his mouth to kiss away some of the sugary sweet icing.  She tasted like peppermint. "It makes think that I should be doing things for you, even if it means I don't always get what I want."

Danny felt a twinge, that even if he got his way this time, he'd never forgive himself.  Or that if he did get his way, she'd be even further away from him, even if she was in the next room.   "You have to go to Stanford, Min.  We're gonna be okay.  I'm just---"

"So just like that?  Go?"

"No, not _just like that_."

"So what is it like then?"

Even if he could explain it, he'd be terrible at it.  It would all come out wrong.  Everything always came out wrong.  "I'm not sure."

"Ugh, Danny, you're lucky you're super hot because you are the worst at communication.  The worst.  I have better heart to hearts with my manicurist, and I am pretty sure that she's plotting to kill me, in her native Korean."  Mindy shifted in her seat, so that her knees bookended his. 

"I'm definitely not plotting to kill you."

Mindy sighed, "Thank God.  Morgan has been hinting."  She bit her lip, "I'm going to San Francisco in nine days, Danny."

"I know."  He smiled, "And I hate it.  But I love it for you.  And you'll be home on the Staten Island Porch--with me--in eight months.  I can live with that."

“Oh thank God, because I was totally going to go."  She picked at a piece of coconut and chewed thoughtfully, "And, just to be clear, I will not suddenly want to move to Staten Island when I get home. Let’s put the Staten Island Porch in Westchester if we can. Or the West Village.  Or even Brooklyn Heights.   It’s definitely a metaphorical porch.”

“I get it, Min.”

“I hope you know, I like you a lot."  Mindy kissed him, short but sweet.  "But how come you didn't make the gingerbread house this year?  I was just...it always makes you so happy."

Something flashed inside Danny’s brain, a tiny connection that he hadn’t made before.  It was so simple.  "It used to."

"But the only thing that's different...Oh my God. We’re breaking up and that’s how you were trying to tell me. I should have seen the signs.”

Danny could only laugh and pull Mindy into his lap, burying his nose in her neck, "No, it's a good thing, I promise."

"So will you please tell me already? You know I can't handle mysteries.  I'm still reeling over Jon Benet!"

He cocked an eyebrow, and kissed away the smudge of icing above her wide, beautiful eyes, "Maybe I'll let you read about it on the plane."

With Mindy tucked into his arms, Danny fell asleep that Christmas night knowing this year, he'd already made his perfect and beautiful thing and eventually, he'd find a way to tell her all about it.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Also, thanks to Anna_S for betaing the hell out of this giant mess and reminding me that gingerbread houses are imperative to a good Danny story.


End file.
